How Do You Get Punched on a Rick Owens Runway? A History of Fashion Week Protests

During the Rick Owens Spring/Summer 2016 show, one catwalker decided to turn his time on the runway into a political protest — and Owens was not happy about it.

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WWD reports that the model, named Jera, held up a sign that read, “Please Kill Angela Merkel — Not.” Owens responded by saying, “It’s a crazy, rogue, f***ing model that I punched when he came back out.” Then he underlined himself, adding: “Please say that I punched him.”

The brand released a statement afterward, saying, “Rick Owens does not claim responsibility for the act of protest by a model at the Spring/Summer 2016 show. This was an independent statement and does not reflect the opinion of the house of Rick Owens.”

In keeping with the models-going-rogue theme, we rounded up some other runway protests (including one fake-out) from recent years.

During Toronto Fashion Week in March, one attendee took the The Wild North show as an opportunity to voice her complaints about the fur industry with a sign that read, “The Wild North. FUR = CRUELTY. This is not fashion this is violence.” And appeared to make it half way down the runway before security escorted her away.

While in Madrid in 2011, another fur protest occurred during the Ion Fiz/Maria Escote show with a demonstrator holding a sign that translates to, “Fur is murder.”

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At the 2013 Nina Ricci show, two female protests from the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN got a little more hostile, storming the runway topless and seizing the models’ arms. They wrote their messages across their bare chests with one reading, “model don’t go to brothels” and another saying, “fashion dictaterror.” They attempted to lift 18-year-old British model Hollie-May Saker’s skirt, but she reacted by punching one demonstrator.

And finally, there’s the most fashionable of all protests: the Chanel spring 2015 collection. Models were led by the Kaiser himself, Karl Lagerfeld, as they took the finale (and streets) by storm holding picket signs that read “Be Your Own” and “Boys Should Get Pregnant Too” and carrying quilted megaphones with the signature interlocking “CCs.”